Jen Café

Time Out says

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Users say
(4)

4 out of 5 stars

Time Out says

3 out of 5 stars

If dumplings drive you to deliriums of delight, make friends with Jen – a Chinatown café where the pillowy parcels reign supreme.

This green-painted café occupies a prominent Chinatown corner site where you can often watch the cooks sitting in front of the windows wrapping the hand-made dumplings. The cheapest dish is the northern Chinese snack of jiao zi, on this menu called ‘Beijing dumplings’, costing a mere fiver: eight white sachets like overfilled ravioli, in either a pork or vegetarian version. The same dumplings fried are guo tie, ‘fried dumplings’, at £6; also called ‘pot stickers’ in American English, these are closely related to Japanese gyoza. The wonton soup is yet another variation on this, and is worth the £6 for the intensely savoury stock.

There are plenty of other dishes served at this simple, no-frills café, from buttered toast through barbecued pork to Hong Kong-style tea and Taiwanese-style bubble teas, but it’s the freshly-made dumplings that keep us coming back.

Disappointing! It is probably ok if you only have the dumplings.. What can I say, as a tastemaker, I seriously question why I stopped by in the first place, I really should have known!

We did enjoy the dumplings but everything else was awful, the service, the level of cleanliness and finally ...the main dishes...We had 'duck noodles' - I say 'duck noodles' because the 'duck' was mostly pieces of duck skin and bones, the 'noodles' looked like super noodles, and it was dumped into a broth which tasted like salt+water and nothing more.

My friend and I went to Jen Cafe because we knew it would be quick service and one of the cheaper places in Chinatown. I chose choy sum and pork dumplings, both of which were piping hot and wholesome. My friend had noodles in a savory clear stock with crispy pork which he also thought was tasty and authentic. The only let down was the hot soya milk we ordered, mine was tepid, which is crazy as surely it's a matter of leaving it in the microwave a bit longer. We will however continue to go.